Evidence of Life. Barbara Sissel Taylor

them before they left. It’s healthier than French toast.” Tears flooded Abby’s eyes as if more of her tears could make a difference. As if anything she’d done or left undone could have prevented her car from rocketing off the road in wet slick darkness with Nick and Lindsey inside it. As if cooked-from-scratch oatmeal made from steel-cut oats packed with natural goodness and touched with honey would bring them back.

      Abby’s mother pulled her up from the floor by her elbow—Abby was always mildly surprised at her mother’s wiry strength—and led her upstairs and into the bathroom she and Nick had shared. While Abby undressed, her mother drew water in the oversize tub and tested it with the inside of her wrist. “Jake called me,” she said, adding bath beads to the water, stirring them with her hand. “He says he can’t come here anymore.”

      She turned away, and Abby slipped off her robe and stepped into the tub. She drew up her knees.

      Her mother opened a cabinet, running her eye over the assortment of linen stacked inside. “It’s hurting him to see you this way, honey. He’s found a job near campus; he says he’s staying there with friends this summer.”

      “I don’t blame him,” Abby whispered. “I can hardly stand to look at him either.”

      Her mother found a washcloth and handed it to Abby, and while she busied herself at the vanity, Abby soaped the cloth and moved it over her breasts and down her torso. She lifted each foot, soaped her calves and in between her toes, and as she worked, the tight icy core of despair in her belly thawed a bit, and the sense of her desolation shallowed in the warmth and dampness of the steamy lavender-scented air. She let out the water, turned on the shower and washed her hair, and when she was finished her mother handed her a towel.

      She helped Abby out of the tub and into her robe. “I’m taking you home, Abigail,” she said, sitting her down on the vanity stool, drying her hair, “and I won’t have an argument about it. I spoke to Charlie. He’ll look after things, the horses and so forth, for a while. You can’t go on this way. You just can’t.”